Recently, the OMG has published a draft version of BPMN 2.0. It’s now reviewed and discussed in the blogger community. I want to give you some background and an overview about the current discussions. In further posts I’ll comment on BPMN 2.0 aspects myself.

BPMN was positioned as a business modeling language with the promise that these models can be enriched to become executable. The long term goal is to have an integrated model base from very high level business models down to technical models which run in the process engine.
First and foremost BPMN was adopted by the business people. They like the easy modeling style and the expressive power of BPMN. Ever since BPM vendors wanted to use BPMN also for their executable processes. BPMN 2.0 is driven by the tool vendors and by the needs of IT.
It starts with a well-defined execution semantics, goes on with a metamodel and exchange format.
Thus, I see BPMN very much in the context of a Modeling Language going executable. But is there any new hot stuff in BPMN 2.0 for modelers?

The latest proposal was handed in as a „revised submission draft“ on September 11, 2008. Unlike other drafts it was made available to the public. The authors seek feedback on the draft from the community and they get it.

Bruce Silver started a series of blog posts about his BPMN 2.0 draft review. He started with his concerns about unclear terminology and concepts. His series of posts on BPMN 2.0 goes on with the new event concepts and model portability. In response, Keith Swenson has also posted on model portability. He basically shares Bruce’s concerns.

Sebastian Stein who is involved in the BPMN standardization at IDS Scheer asked for further comments on BPMN 2.0 and we want to do it here in the next few posts. I asked Gero Decker to post on choreography modeling in BPMN 2.0. It’s a new modeling style coming in and Gero is definitely the right person to comment in this. I’ll concentrate on the new eventing flavors and BPMN extensibility. But there is tons of aspects coming in with the new standard proposal.